Refutation of All Heresies 7.18.3

Authorship disputed: The work names no author. Book 1 was long printed among Origen's works as the Philosophumena; after books 4–10 were found in a manuscript from Mount Athos (published 1851), it was assigned to Hippolytus, the usual view today, though some scholars ascribe it to another Roman writer of the same circle. Books 2 and 3 are lost, and book 4 lacks its beginning.

Summary: “Said of a subject” means a common term like “animal,” which is truly said of many different species.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 350–352

Καθʼ ὑποκειμένου δὲ λέγει, οἱονεὶ τὸ γένος, ὅπερ ἔφην ζῷον κατὰ πάντων τῶν κατὰ μέρος ὑποκειμένων ζῴων, οἱονεὶ βοός, ἵππου καὶ τῶν ἐφεξῆς, κοινῷ ὀνόματι λεγόμενον. Ἀληθὲς γάρ ἐστιν εἰπεῖν, ὅτι ζῷον ἄνθρωπος ἐστὶ καὶ ζῷον ἵππος καὶ ζῷόν ἐστι βοῦς καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἕκαστον· τουτέστι τὸ καθʼ ὑποκειμένου, τὸ ἓν ὂν κατὰ πολλῶν καὶ διαφόρων τοῖς εἴδεσι δυνάμενον ὁμοίως λέγεσθαι.

English · Claude translation

By “said of a subject” he means something like the genus, which I called animal, said by a common name of all the particular animals that fall under it, such as ox, horse, and the rest. For it is true to say that a human being is an animal, and a horse is an animal, and an ox is an animal, and each of the others; that is, what is “said of a subject” is that which, being one, can be said alike of many things differing in species.

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 350–352 · Ludwig Duncker and F. G. Schneidewin, eds., S. Hippolyti episcopi et martyris Refutationis omnium haeresium librorum decem quae supersunt (Göttingen: Dieterich, 1859); section divisions from Paul Wendland, ed., Hippolytus Werke 3: Refutatio omnium haeresium, GCS 26 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1916) · Greek text: L. Duncker and F. G. Schneidewin, Refutationis omnium haeresium (Göttingen, 1859), digitized by the Perseus Digital Library; section divisions from P. Wendland (GCS 26, 1916), digitized by the First Thousand Years of Greek project (Open Greek and Latin); both CC BY-SA 4.0

Text

As printed in Duncker–Schneidewin. Manuscript variants and the editor's apparatus are not reproduced; no textual problem is noted in this passage.

Translation

Claude translation (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 · Translated by Claude from the Greek text of Duncker–Schneidewin; made independently of existing English translations.

Compare

Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 5 (1886) (an older public-domain English translation, whole volume at CCEL; checked against ours only after ours was made) · Its chapter numbers differ from the standard (Wendland) numbering used here.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 7.18.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/7/18/3/).

The SBL abbreviation for this work has not been checked yet.

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 7.18.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/7/18/3/).